Thursday, September 13, 2007

Lost Day

It seems I missed a day of posting. Not that anyone noticed. I could have been abducted by aliens and given a butt probe and nobody would have noticed.

And this brings up another question. Why would aliens from another solar system tens or hundreds or thousands of light years away come to such a primitive backwards planet just to give furless apes anal probes? You would figure that with technology to travel at or above the speed of light they could do stuff without having to probe primitive life forms.

But I was not abducted by aliens, or given any probes or whatever.

In other news, it seems there are a few sailing schools around me. I have narrowed the choice down to three places.

1. Biscayne Bay Sailing School. These guys offer American Sailing Association certification, and I would get time on a Hunter 306 sailboat. This is a fine 30 footer live aboard. The cost is $500 for the basic class. At that point I will have basic keelboat certification from the ASA. This seems to be a good program.

2. Castle Harbor Sailing Club. This outfit offers different certification (US Sailing) but it is pretty much the same thing. I have to check about the length of the class - it seems that Biscayne Bay Sailing School has a longer program. But Castle Harbor rents sailboats. And if I go through them I can join the club and get a discount on future classes and boat rentals. I could even get checked out on their 17 foot powerboat and be able to rent a 25 foot twin engine powerboat for some real offshore trips. But I do not want a shortened program. I would rather go to a better program to learn, then get checked out on a Castle Harbor 20 footer and then join them for the boat rental discount. The intro class is 2 days (probably 16 hours) for $395 and the basic keelboard certification is another $195.

3. Shake-A-Leg Miami. The intro class is $335 for 16 hours of instruction, and then another $525 for a 20 hour US Sailing basic keelboat certification. Shake-A-Leg Miami does a lot of charity work with kids - mostly kids with disabilities. They also offer hourly boat rentals.

Tropical depression #8 is churning away. I am slightly concerned about this one. You see, it is going to stay to the north of Puerto Rico. And it is projected to get stronger.

Now here is why this one is concerning. IF the Bermuda High holds, then the storm will be steered at or very close to Florida. Now "Florida" means the keys to Jacksonville - a pretty big area.

But the Bermuda High could give and allow upper level winds to dip south. If this happens then a nice path will be formed - with the Bermuda High to the east and upper level winds to the west. This would keep the storm away from FL but could pose problems for The Bahamas - unless the storm is steered away from The Bahamas too.

Or it could dissipate, or hit some other land mass which weakens it. Who knows. It is far too soon to make any real predictions. Nobody knows what the jet stream will do, or how the high pressure over Bermuda will hold up.

But this is the first storm this season that stands a chance of hitting Florida. Exactly what the chance is nobody knows, but it is safe to assume it is either 0% or 100% (it will either make landfall in Florida or not). I will be watching this one for the next few days to see how it goes.

Hey, I was on that same spaceship getting the butt probe. That's why I didn't comment. I was the one that kicked the prober in the chops. That will teach them to abduct bad tempered chunky middle aged women!I guess it's just a slow-down in traffic all over the web-o-sphere thing. But though it may not cause you to do handsprings, I'm never permanently removed, unless I die or the butt probing aliens take me to their home world. I'm just distracted, probably caught up in a traffic exchange program somewhere.